It all started when…

...a bunch of journalists got in a room and realized they were not serving their community as well as they could -- and then decided to do something about it.

Let's back up a few years.

In early 2015, the St. Louis region was reeling from the killing of Michael Brown, shot dead by a Ferguson police officer. The St. Louis Public Radio newsroom, like other local media outlets, covered the story. Then some editors decided that as a whole, the news organization needed to do more. They tasked two people -- reporter Tim Lloyd and then-Diversity Fellow Emanuele Berry -- with coming up with a project that would examine race in St. Louis. Berry and Lloyd decided to try a podcast.

It was only supposed to last a year.

But a series of changes in that first year -- Berry's departure from the station to accept a Fulbright scholarship, the arrival of new co-producer and co-host Kameel Stanley and, luckily, a receptive audience and supportive community -- has kept We Live Here going. And growing.

Three years after its initial launch, We Live Here has been downloaded more than 600,000 times. In 2017, it formed a partnership with PRX, which began co-producing the show as part of a groundbreaking acceleration program for public radio-based podcasts called Project Catapult. The podcast has wracked up numerous local and national awards, including the 2017 Kaleidoscope Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association for outstanding coverage of diverse communities and issues.

In April 2018, We Live Here kicked off its fourth season with an ambitious plan: focusing an entire season on a single topic. For the remainder of the year, hosts Tim Lloyd and Kameel Stanley will explore the intersection of race, class and housing in one of the nation's most segregated regions - St. Louis.